Chinese experts are organizing a project to rescue "Female Characters" as the only written form of feminine scripts in the world that are on the verge of extinction.

"Female Characters", also named "female letters", is an old unique written form of females handed down among folks from generation to generation in Jiangyong County, Hunan Province.

Sole Female Characters in the World

Totaling over 2,000 symbols in all, the characters by themselves were just a sign system having been used by females in daily life.

As is known from textual research, these were not only sole female characters or rare signs and old syllable characters closely related to inscriptions on bones or tortoise shells known to China's history, but also a written form of scripts from ancient Yue handed down to current age.

"Characters" Face with Inheritance Crisis

After being discovered by the "Female Characters" Research Group of the South-Central University for Ethnic Communities of Hubei Province in 1983, the precious works of the traditional Chinese culture quickly aroused thick attention and wide concern among Chinese and foreign scholars. However, due to certain historical and practical reasons, the "Female Characters" are faced with inheritance crisis. Successors of the scripts had passed away successively without worthy successors; source works of the scripts had run off severely. About a hundred of "Female Character" works had been missing but found in foreign lands and some were even damaged.

Society Urged to Rescue the Characters

Proposal on Close Attentions

A call has been issued by participants at the Chinese "Female Characters" Cultural Salvage Project Forum--National "Female Characters" Academic Symposium held in the South-Central University for Ethnic Communities in May 2001 for close attention and active effective measures for conducting, rescuing, research and developing work on "Female Characters".

Research Collection to be published

Experts proposed to set up "Chinese 'Female Characters Cultural Symposium" and unite all those who are concerned with "Female Characters". "Female Characters" Cultural Research Center of the South-Central University for Ethnic Communities and the People's Government of Jiangyong County will jointly set up an editorial board of the "Chinese 'Female Characters' Cultural Research Collection". The board will be in charge of the work of editing and publishing the "Chinese 'Female Characters' Cultural Research Collection". The collection will include a large number of original written sources and documents of the "Female Characters". The publication of the collection is the first step of the rescue project.

Blueprint of Rescuing Work

Sources say that "China 'Female Characters' Cultural Salvage Project" has been blueprinted for collating and publishing an 8-million-character collection of "China 'Female Characters' Cultural Research", setting up a Chinese "Female Characters" Cultural Museum, developing Jiangyong Cultural Tourism Beauty Spot and Convening the International Academic Symposium on "Female Characters".

(People's Daily March 26, 2002)